Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth by Marion Meade Page A

meaning of Helena’s threat that he would get nothing from the marriage. She was equally unwilling to give anything outside the bedroom and their relationship soon deteriorated into a battlefield devoid of ordinary civility. Whatever pretenses Nikifor had formerly made about interest in the occult quickly evaporated. He no longer had patience for lengthy metaphysical discussions and it became clear to Helena that he knew nothing about the sorcerers of Erivan. All he wanted was a normal marriage with a normal wife. “What I wanted and searched for,” H.P.B. wrote, “was the subtle magnetism that one exchanges, the human ‘salt,’ and father Blavatsky did not have it.” As far as her occult studies were concerned, “this did not suit the old man, hence quarrels, nearly battles.” 81
    Toward the end of August, they received a visit from her family, which had remained in the vicinity vacationing. While nothing was said about the true state of affairs, her relatives could not have supposed the marriage happy. At the end of the month, the Fadeyevs accompanied the newlyweds to Erivan, stopping on the way to visit the monastery of Echmiadzin—the headquarters of the Armenian Church—with its Tibetan bell inscribed Om Mani Padme Hum; they gawked at Mount Ararat, on whose summit Noah was supposed to have landed his ark; and they visited the nearby ruins of Bashgarni. It was all very interesting and educational, but it did not succeed in alleviating Helena’s misery. The Fadeyevs went back home, and she was left alone with her husband.
    The Armenian city of Erivan was old and Asiatic in character, with only a few newly built houses and occasional Russian soldiers in the streets. After Helena had strolled about the town, visiting the dozens of canals and the bazaar where merchants sat with tame falcons on their wrists, there was little to do. Preoccupied by fantasies of escape, she persuaded Nikifor to allow her to take horseback trips around Mount Ararat and the neighboring countryside. Rightfully wary, Nikifor designated a Kurd named Safar Ali Bel Ibrahim Bek Ogli to be her personal escort, but in reality, he was to function as her guard. Apparently unaware of Safar Ali’s real job, Helena confided to him her plans for escape, which he promptly reported to his employer. By this time, it must have been painfully clear to Nikifor that only a full-time police officer could keep his wife from running away, and it could hardly have come as a surprise when she suddenly disappeared one day.
    H.P.B. liked to give the impression that she rode through the mountains back to Tiflis all alone. Such a journey would have been difficult for an eighteen-year-old girl unfamiliar with the trails, no matter how expert a horsewoman she may have been. But she may have felt her situation desperate enough to warrant a few risks in fleeing from what she considered imprisonment. If she had disliked Nikifor at the beginning of the marriage, she now despised him.
     
I, hating my husband, N. V. Blavatsky (it may have been wrong, but still such was the nature God gave me), left him, abandoned him—a virgin (I shall produce documents and letters proving this, although he himself is not such a swine as to deny it). 82
     
    He was not at all a swine. In fact, for the rest of his life, he tactfully refrained from making any public comment whatsoever about the woman who would make his name world famous.
     
     

 
    THE VEILED YEARS
     
    1849-1873
     
     
     
     

 
    I
     
    The Hindu at Ramsgate
     
     
    In Tiflis, Helena Petrovna went noisily to pieces, swearing that “I would kill myself if I was forced to return” 1 to Erivan. Her grandfather was embarrassed, unnerved, and finally, furious. Helena’s flight was not only an affront to his friend, it was also a social disgrace. With her indiscreet pursuit of Prince Golitsyn—a scandal narrowly averted by marriage—still fresh in his memory, he could now foresee a whole chain of headaches looming